10 posts and columns on ad targeting

Not Your Mother’s 1995 Ford Escort

The site is like a 1995 Ford Escort with a 500-horsepower advertising engine under the hood.

– Alexis Madrigal, senior editor at The Atlantic, describing the Drudge Report in an article entitled “Drudge Report Looks Old-School, but Its Ad Targeting Is State-of-the-Art”

Social Ad Guys 33Across Buy Copy/Paste Guys Tynt

in Media on January 25 at 4:00 am PT

An ad tech linkup that makes sense.
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Voices

The “Mad Men” Years Are Giving Way to the “Math Men” Era

in Voices on January 20 at 3:50 pm PT

I love the “Mad Men” version of the ad business. The storytelling. The simplicity. The glasses of scotch at 10 am. But these days in digital, it feels like the Math Men media buyers (with their terabytes of data) are taking over for the Mad Men creatives.

Facebook Testing Social Commerce Feature "Buy With Friends"

in Social on January 25, 2011 at 2:35 pm PT

Facebook is testing a new feature called Buy With Friends to give users social incentives to increase their purchases of virtual goods from games on its platform, according to the company’s product marketing manager for commerce, Deb Liu.

Voices

To Stem Privacy Abuses, Industry Groups Will Track Web Trackers

in News on June 24, 2010 at 5:00 am PT

A new system to police privacy abuses by companies that track consumers’ Web-surfing habits for ad targeting will be launched in coming months by groups whose members include heavy users of this type of information–Internet companies such as Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. and advertising companies like WPP PLC.

Apple: Here’s How to Opt Out of Our Targeted Ads (But Not Our Location Tracking)

in Media on June 21, 2010 at 6:30 pm PT

If you’re willing to do the work, you can opt out of Apple’s ad trackers. But Apple is going to keep track of your iPhone’s location data, no matter what you want.

Voices

Lawmakers Draft Web-Ad Privacy Safeguards

in News on May 3, 2010 at 4:04 pm PT

Advertisers and Internet companies have been scrambling to head off regulation they say will hamper growth of online advertising. The pressure is expected to build Tuesday as lawmakers prepare to announce proposed privacy legislation.

Voices

Protecting Offline Privacy

in News on November 19, 2009 at 9:30 am PT

Washington policy makers, long concerned about how marketers use consumers’ personal data to their guide sales pitches on the Internet, have stepped up scrutiny of the increasingly sophisticated ad-targeting techniques used in other media, ranging from mobile phones to TV commercials to the ads consumers get in their mail boxes.

Voices

eBay: Plenty of Options to Unlock Value

in News on March 9, 2009 at 8:03 am PT

On Wednesday, eBay will hold a meeting with analysts to discuss the current business and strategy. There is little expectation that the company will announce any dramatic moves, and concern about the health of the business remains high, as expressed by eBay’s surprisingly low P/E–the stock trades at just seven times expected 2009 results. Of the 29 analysts tracked by Thomson who follow the company, only four rate the stock a Buy or Strong Buy.

Voices

Rep. Boucher Calls for Internet Ad Regulation

in News on February 13, 2009 at 2:35 pm PT

In an interview Friday, Rep. Rick Boucher, (D-Va.) called for Congress to take a tougher stance in regulating online ad-targeting, despite the FTC’s endorsement of industry self-regulation. “I am coming to believe (industry self-regulation) is not sufficient,” said Rep. Boucher, chairman of the House subcommittee on communications, technology and the Internet. He noted that there is a need for a set of laws that dictate parameters for how companies collect, share and use online data about their consumers.